Thread: Don't pull no punches, tell me what you really think.

The problem with US elections as I see it is you don't really get to choose. You get to pick one out of 2 pre selected candidates.
Noone else has a chance to win. And often it'll just swing from one party to the other because at the end of the 4 (or 8) years, people vote for the other party out of dissatisfaction.

Obama's skin color was no doubt a factor in the elections, but the main driver for the moderates (as far as I could tell) was that they were so disillusioned with Bush and the republicans that Obama got the presidency handed to him on a platter. That, and the republicans had just spent 4 years preparing for a race with a privileged white woman, not a black man from a lower to middle class background.

The original founding fathers never trusted the common folk to pick the right people to lead the country and that's why they set things up they way they did at the time. When you come to think about it things really haven't changed that much. The whole notion of Govt by and for the people is just that a notion. The reality is it's all about the ruling classes and corporations and monied groups. That's who really control things. The rest is like a fairy tale like "all men are created equal".

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

The rest is like a fairy tale like "all men are created equal".

I'm guessing you're a fan of George Orwell.

Nelson does have a point though.
While it is possible for a president to come out of lower classes (Obama being the living proof of this), the president is just a figurehead for the party he represents. By the time he is running, he owes so much to the senior party officials that he becomes a sock puppet.

Power preserves power. Hense the policital influence of e.g the Bush family.
Btw, both Kerry and Bush belong to skull and bones, which is a society which protects and advances their own, and which is pretty selective in their initiates.

2-party systems are basically doomed from the population's point of view.

I'd rather have Al Gore than Barack Obama. Do you know painful that is for me to type?

Voting is a giant waste of time and money. There should be a lottery to pick say 50000 people across the whole society who vote, and everybody else should do something that's actually useful instead.

Originally Posted by gugi

Voting is a giant waste of time and money. There should be a lottery to pick say 50000 people across the whole society who vote, and everybody else should do something that's actually useful instead.

I would rather have a lottery that picks the office holder from the pool of eligible citizens, why get a random sampling of voters. This is more likely to give us a "government of, by and for, the people". I am much more likely to trust the cabdriver from NY or the housewife in Peoria than I am a political candidate, wether the candidate was elected by 50,000 or 50 million. The candidate would still be somebody elses "sock puppet". Whereas the common person would at least have "good intentions" instead of someone elses agenda.

Thank you Bruno for the term "sock puppet".

No, my suggestion is actually serious and I think it'll work better than the current system. I don't think the 'common person' in the position of power has any better intentions. I'd wager my money they're gonna get about just as corrupt, but much more incompetent. If they can be manipulated by the money to the extent they currently are, just watch when they hold an office and the pressure is many orders of magnitude higher.

I don't think I have to point out the abundance of examples where 'common people' get to rule a country. What's that about learning from history... or not....